If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Hello Guest,Our records indicate that you have never posted to our site before! Why not make your first post today by saying hello to our community in our Introductions forum.

Please review the forums rules, start with your first post today and become an active part of petri.co.il forums now!

exchange 2003 with thousands of queue messages.

19th August 2009, 14:30

i am helping out a friend, since this same thing happened to me a while ago, but all the guides that i was pointed to and the Aqadmcli program from microsofts web site are not getting rid of the emails in the queue.

Alternative Queue Clean Up Method
If you have a very large number of messages, then there is a command line tool that you can get from Microsoft. ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/pss/Tools/
Then go in to the folders: Exchange Support Tools / Aqadmcli
(Due to the use of spaces in the folder names, a direct link isn't possible)
After downloading the utility use the following command to clear all the queues.

aqadmcli delmsg flags=all

when he runs that command, all he sees as a reply are a ton of

error: no flags specified

we see that error scroll down in cmd prompt for a full 5 seconds before
it stops.

i remember when i had this issue, i ran that program/command and
it took about 10 minutes, but all the queues went away. not happening for him.

i would also like to point out that he was setup as an open relay. that probably
makes it obvious why he has all these messages in his queue from yahoo.hk, etc...
i have yet to speak with him this morning to see if any other clean up articles helped him out after hours last night, but i would appreciate any information to relay back to him.

serverOS is SBS 2003 and it is up to date with patches.
exchange 2003 is also up to date.

thanks.

edit- i forgot to mention that i had him uncheck the box that made him an open relay server.

The server is an open relay. Close the relay and harden the exchange server. Make sure its patched to the current patch levels. Use the Exchange best practice analyzer to do this.

In order to remove ALL email from the queues stop all the exchange services including the SMTP service browse to the following folder: \Exchsrvr\Mailroot\vsi 1\Queue. Note this folder may take some time to open because of the volume of email. Select all and delete. Renable all exchange services and you should see the queue's are cleared.

Comment

The server is an open relay. Close the relay and harden the exchange server. Make sure its patched to the current patch levels. Use the Exchange best practice analyzer to do this.

In order to remove ALL email from the queues stop all the exchange services including the SMTP service browse to the following folder: \Exchsrvr\Mailroot\vsi 1\Queue. Note this folder may take some time to open because of the volume of email. Select all and delete. Renable all exchange services and you should see the queue's are cleared.

please dont take the the wrong way, but did you read the part where i stated that the server is no longer an open relay and that the OS and exchange have up to date patches?

Comment

Apologies. I read it afterwards Did you read the second half of my post as that will resolve the mail sat in you're queues.

yes, that is what the articles i read said to do.

i forwarded the articles that had the same info you posted to my friend, but he wasn't going to do anything until after hours. he called me this morning and he said the queued messages started going away on their own around 5-7 pm, which is when he logged in to do the work after hours.

as of right now, he has no mail in his queue, other than what his organization is sending out and those are not staying in the queue like the emails from yahoo.com.hk were.

why do you think the tool from Microsoft didn't work? i didn't have any problems when i used it a while back.

Comment

Without being infront of your server i have no way of telling you that. Either way i dont use that its easier to stop the SMTP service and remove the SPAM manually. Ensure he isnt blacklisted. Theres a possibility that he may be, seeing as he "was" an open relay.

Comment

Without being infront of your server i have no way of telling you that. Either way i dont use that its easier to stop the SMTP service and remove the SPAM manually. Ensure he isnt blacklisted. Theres a possibility that he may be, seeing as he "was" an open relay.

Comment

The quote looks like it is from my spam cleanup article.
I did state in that article that it can take more than one pass to clear the queues. It is not usual for it to take four or five hours to clear them completely because of the way that ESM processes email messages. When a spammer abuses a server many 1000s of messages are dumped on the server, which Exchange struggles to process.

Comment

The quote looks like it is from my spam cleanup article.
I did state in that article that it can take more than one pass to clear the queues. It is not usual for it to take four or five hours to clear them completely because of the way that ESM processes email messages. When a spammer abuses a server many 1000s of messages are dumped on the server, which Exchange struggles to process.

Simon.

yes, that is from your site. so the error he got when he ran the command was normal?

he said he got that error the first time he typed it in.

as of right now, all email has been cleared out. whether it timed out and deleted itself or maybe it was the command, but when i ran it when i had my problem a while back, i don't remember seeing that error.

Comment

I didn't have an open relay and was still getting message in the queue (all spam). I enabled IMF (with update enabled) and it still didn't help. I started getting blacklisted because of all the junk mail being sent from our Exchange server.